Fired radio hosts, If he had been listening from his car Monday morning, radio veteran Steak Shapiro knew what he would have thought of a bit mocking a former New Orleans Saint now battling Lou Gehrig's disease.
"I would have been offended."
Why? The now former host
of "Mayhem in the AM" on Atlanta's 790 The Zone offered up plenty of
reasons in an interview Tuesday with CNN's Brooke Baldwin. And none of
his descriptions of the now infamous two-minute radio bit were positive.
Stupid. Not thought out. Offensive. Awful. And not funny.
"You walk a fine line trying to be somewhat on the edge," Shapiro said. "We blew it. We blew it in a huge way."
Shapiro and the show's two other hosts -- Chris Dimino and Nick Cellini -- radio host were fired Monday evening.
It all started, he
explained, as the show's crew batted around ideas during a commercial
break. The Atlanta Falcons are big in Georgia, and the New Orleans
Saints are likely their biggest rivals. And it just so happened that
Gleason, one of the men most associated with the Louisiana team, had
been the guest writer for Peter King's popular "Monday Morning Quarterback" column this week on SI.com.
But Gleason isn't just
any Saint. He's a hero in New Orleans not just for his play as a
defensive back but, more recently, for his battle against amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular disease also known by its acronym ALS
and as Lou Gehrig's disease.
The illness has hindered
many of Gleason's functions, but it hasn't stopped him. To put together
the column, he pointed out, he used technology that allowed him to type
with his eyes. Gleason also explained his struggles with, and triumphs
over, the disease.
"ALS prevents your brain
from talking to your muscles. As a result, muscles die. As a result,
every 90 minutes people die," he wrote. "I am a person."
The "Mayhem in the AM"
crew decided to spoof Gleason's illness, specifically, the fact he
speaks with a synthetic voice. The segment featured punchlines of an
imaginary Gleason telling knock-knock jokes, using a would-be
synthesizer, with punchlines like "Smother me, do me a favor."
On Tuesday, Shapiro
offered no defense for the segment, which he described as quickly
conceived and ill-advised. At the outset, he realized the bit wasn't
funny but wasn't prepared as it quickly got slammed on social media and
beyond.
"The pressure is to try to do a good radio show, and that wasn't a good moment," Shapiro recalled. "It was a horrible moment."
Within hours, the radio
station and its parent company had suspended Cellini, Dimino and
Shapiro. By day's end, they were all out of a job.
"790 The Zone, our
owners, sponsors and partners in no way endorse or support this kind of
content. We sincerely apologize to Mr. Gleason, his family and all those
touched by ALS," Rick Mack, the station's general manager, said in a
statement
All three hosts have apologized on Twitter and personally to the Team Gleason foundation, as Gleason himself wrote on Facebook.
"Received and accepted,"
he wrote. "We have all made mistakes in this life. How we learn from
our mistakes is the measure of who we are."
Since the story broke,
Gleason said, there's been a lot of talk about ALS, an ailment he
characterizes as being "not (well) understood ... and largely ignored."
Hopefully, this unintentional uproar will help change that, he said.
That's Shapiro's hope as
well. At the same time, he's personally shaken for his part in
offending so many -- including Gleason, those fighting ALS and the city
of New Orleans. The 18-year radio veteran knows New Orleans well: he
attended Tulane University, was married in the city and even has a
daughter named Nola.
"It's a place I
understand their passions and their heroes," Shapiro said, counting
Gleason as one such hero. "And to make fun of those, it's an awful
thing. I feel awful about it."
Outrage over radio
hosts' comments is hardly unprecedented, especially in a "shock jock"
age in which some push the line in order to entertain listeners.
And sometimes the hosts get fired. That's what happened when Gregg Hughes and Anthony Cumia's "Opie and Anthony" show got pulled
in 2002 for a stunt in which they broadcast descriptions of people
having sex in public places, including New York's St. Patrick Cathedral.
Five years later, CBS abruptly ended Don Imus' radio show after his
remarks about Rutgers University's women's basketball program that some
deemed racist and sexist.
Both Imus and "Opie and Anthony" are still in the radio business and have nationwide followings.
More recently, two
popular Australian radio DJs made headlines for a prank call targeting a
pregnant Catherine Duchess of Cambridge that was followed by the
suicide of a nurse fooled by their call.
Those radio hosts were
suspended, not fired. That's what should have happened to Cellini,
Dimino and Shapiro, according to Sirius XM radio host Jay Thomas of New
Orleans, where he says "Steve Gleason is an icon." Thomas
is an accomplished actor, winning three Emmy awards as Candice Bergen's
love interest, talk show host Jerry Gold, on "Murphy Brown." He also
worked on "Cheers," playing hockey star Eddie LeBec, husband of Rhea
Perlman's Carla Tortelli.
Thomas -- who admits
being a "huge Saints fan" who doesn't like Atlanta -- believes 790 the
Zone's management overreacted to "a bad joke." He noted that TV shows
such as "Family Guy" have repeatedly featured caricatures of Steven
Hawking, who also has ALS and uses a synthetic voice, in its shows with
no equivalent uproar.
The Atlanta saga would
have ended better if the fired radio hosts, after being suspended for
some time, had returned to talk about ALS with Gleason and raised money
for the cause, said Thomas.
"That was a dumb thing
to say, but no one is yelling for them to get fired," Thomas told CNN.
"... It 's a terrible thing, a stupid thing. But yeah, you make
mistakes."
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